Between parents and grandparents, there’s one timeless phrase that gets used as a universal excuse for total chaos and sabotaging any attempt at parenting: “You’re here to raise them, and grandmas are here to spoil them.” At first glance, it sounds innocent and sweet. But in my mother-in-law’s case, this phrase has become a weapon she uses to systematically undermine everything we try to set up at home.
My wife and I have two kids—a five-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son. We try to keep a strict routine, because without it, life with two energetic kids in an apartment is pure chaos. Bedtime is at eight, TV only after homework is done, and they’re allowed a maximum of half an hour a day on the phone for selected cartoons. It works—the kids are calm, well-rested, and have no problems at school or kindergarten.
But everything falls apart every time the kids spend a weekend with my mother-in-law.
She lives just around the corner in a house with a garden, so at first, her offer to watch the kids on weekends seemed like a welcome help. But from the very start, my mother-in-law saw her role as a competition to be the kids’ favorite. Instead of taking them to the playground, for a walk in the woods, or drawing with them, she chose the path of least resistance: she scrapped all the rules.
At her place, the kids can do absolutely anything. Want to have cookies for lunch and drink liters of sugary soda? No problem. Want to stare at the tablet from morning till night and lounge in bed? Grandma happily turns it on for them so she can have some peace and quiet. And bedtime? That’s at eleven, because “they weren’t tired yet.”
The worst part wasn’t even the weekend itself, but rather the Mondays and Tuesdays after they came back home.
Every time, we’d bring home two completely wound-up, exhausted, and aggressive kids with upset stomachs. Just asking my son to put away his shoes or sit down to do homework would trigger a hysterical tantrum: “At grandma’s, I don’t have to do anything! Grandma is nice, you’re mean!” We spent all of Monday and Tuesday getting the kids back into a functional state and calming their outbursts.
When we tried to calmly discuss it over coffee with my mother-in-law, we ran into total arrogance masked as grandmotherly love. My wife told her, “Mom, we really appreciate you watching them. But please, put them to bed on time and don’t let them spend the whole day on tablets. Otherwise, they cry and don’t sleep for two days after.”
My mother-in-law just waved her hand dismissively and smirked: “Oh, don’t make such a fuss. You’re so uptight. Kids should have a holiday and paradise at grandma’s. That’s what grandmas are for—to spoil them and do things parents forbid. You’re all brainwashed by those modern parenting books these days. We raised you and you turned out fine.”
It was a complete mockery. In her logic, she was the wonderful, loving person who fulfilled every wish, while we were the evil tyrants who made them brush their teeth and go to bed. All the hard work, the consequences of lack of sleep and bad moods, were left for us to deal with.
The turning point came when our daughter’s tooth swelled up after a weekend marathon of lollipops and zero brushing, and we had to go to the emergency dentist on Sunday night. On Monday morning, my mother-in-law called to ask if we’d bring the kids over again for the next weekend.
This time, I answered the phone. “We won’t. Until you understand that the parents’ rules apply in your house too, the kids won’t be staying overnight.”
There was silence on the line, followed by an offended outburst about how ungrateful we were and how we were denying her own flesh and blood. But this time, we didn’t budge. We completely canceled weekends at grandma’s for three months. If she wanted to see her grandchildren, she could come over for an afternoon visit, where the routine was firmly in our hands.
Only when she saw that she was actually losing access to her grandchildren by not respecting the rules did she soften her stance. She realized that “spoiling” doesn’t mean destroying the kids’ health and undoing their parents’ hard work. It was a tough lesson for us: grandmas often confuse love with buying the kids’ affection at the parents’ expense. If you don’t set a clear boundary, it destroys not only the parents’ authority but also the peace of the whole family.
